The forgotten, perhaps non-existent man

As with Scott Sumner, I can’t simply link to every good post at Modeled Behavior. Otherwise, you should just be reading Modeled Behavior. Karl Smith asks us to imagine the ideal citizen, “Citizen X“, who maximally produces positive externalities without imposing costs on others. We might also call him “sucker”, or “sap”, but let’s not insult the hand that feeds us. I don’t think the idea gets much attention in the first-world, but I imagine it did under communism. I imagine the same would be true for Fnargocracy. As I note in a comment at M.B, this topic should be relevant for immigration policy.

I’m glad to see that Moldbug has “proven” that everything I own really belongs to “Officer Friendly”. Of course, Officer Friendly neither needs or cares about the justifications written for him by power-worshipping nerds like Moldbug, any more than the Nazis ever really cared what Heidegger thought of them.

I’d be almost be very glad to see the crawling Mr. Moldbug hoist by his own wretched petard, in the form of a bit of asset forfeiture action provided by his local thugs in blue. “Is that a trace of cocaine on this dollar bill of yours, Mr. Moldbug? Our well-trained drug sniffing dog sure thinks so” as might be said at a traffic stop.

If at some point the “Crips” or whatever hallucinatory threatening organization of black people Moldbug fears so much ever did prove themselves stronger than Officer Friendly, Moldbug would be writing apologias for them. Nerds love the smell of power, even though they can never share it or wield it themselves.